Lies
by demondreaming
Summary: Jade only ever touches you in the dark. When alcohol clouds her breath and her fingers are made of ash and smell of smoke. Jori, rated M.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Victorious, or indeed any victory. I own the hell out of defeat, though.**

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She's never going to love you. So really, what's the use?

If it's a game that you're playing, you're bound to lose. She talks to you with soft lips, but her eyes never grace your face. The words bleed out so harmlessly, and you let them stain your skin, try to staunch their flow. But you're starting to realise it's your blood dripping from her tongue, and you're getting weaker with every word.

She only ever touches you in the dark. When alcohol clouds her breath and her fingers are made of ash and smell of smoke. You're a party to her, and one she's keen to throw. She's never there for the clean up in the morning though. It started- oh, when does it ever matter when it started? It's the why you don't know the answer to. You're not her type. You're a lie she keeps repeating, and you don't know why. Her lips graced yours, and they tasted like something you'd craved without knowing. They still do.

You kiss her now, while she's still reeling. While the alcohol still muddies her brain and makes her believe that lie she tells herself. That she wants you. Her lips are sharp, bitter with whatever she's drank. Something foul that curdles her breath, but underneath you can still taste her. The very atoms of her vibrate on your tongue. You make her a part of you, as much as you can. The only thing she makes of you is a fool.

She chuckles into your mouth, into your lungs. She fills you with laughter, but it's sour and poisonous. It makes your veins seethe. You're just a joke to her. Just a fucking joke that she keeps telling, over and over. And you wish you'd never heard it. You wish the punchline wasn't quite so poignant. Her fingertips drum their mirth on your shoulder.

You've had a crush on her for longer than you can tell. Crush felt like the appropriate word for what you were feeling; like your heart was gripped in a vice, being squeezed to mush. You've held the words in your lungs until they screamed to let them out, until they begged your brain for breath, but you'd kept your mouth shut, resolute. It turned to love in your blood, dark, dark red. Stagnant and clotted. You love her. Oh, what a stupid thing you've done. You felt that love in your stomach, where it pooled, heavy and cold. You've shoved your fingers down your throat until nothing but bile came out, until blood spotted the bowl, but that love never even showed. It's a poison you can't expunge. It's a part of you now, it's calcified and stuck to your bones, and only death will remove it. It's every liquid in your body, ice that melts only under her touch. She knows. Of course she knows. She could taste it in your spit, taste it on the tip of her tongue when it flicked between your legs. You could taste it in the blood you drew from biting your lip. To keep from spilling out those useless words. Your whole body was already screaming them at her.

You kiss her again to silence her sniggering, and it feels like anything but the first time. When her lips curved in a smile and drifted towards yours, like they were a secret she was hesitant to tell. You kept them. You were there, and you were drunk, and so was she. All you ever are is alcohol. The pair of you. It's the accelerant, it's the fuel that keeps you sputtering, keeps you both from shuddering apart. It keeps her stuck to you, and you're hesitant to change that. To fully expel the taste of alcohol from your tastebuds. The taste is synonymous now. Her lips were so soft that first time, soft as water, and just as flowing. Whispering over yours like a quiet stream, while your heart pounded a tempo that shook your hands where they trembled in your lap.

The only thing making your hands shake now is the liquor, fizzing through your veins. Or maybe it's her. You can't tell anymore. You never get drunk without her, or maybe it's her presence that brings the feeling. You can't tell. You don't want to tell. You don't want to drink alone and wait for that feeling that might not come. You're not an alcoholic. Alcohol is just the catalyst. It's just the matchmaker, the mood lighting. It guides her hands to your hips, and it guides your mouth to her lips.

She's silent now, but you can feel the burble of laughter under her skin, that amusement she gets from you. Your love is such a ridiculous thing to her. It's ridiculous to you, too. But it's yours. It's your love, and ridiculous or not, it's immutable, and it hurts. Maybe you'd laugh too, if you didn't choke on it every time. Your sense of humour is just different from hers.

Your lips bruise hers, and maybe making a mark will make you feel better in the morning. When your head throbs and your hands ache and the scratches on your back sting, dried blood spotting your shoulder blades, rust under Jade's nails. You never feel it when she does it. The liquor numbs you, turns your fingers to blunt, heavy things, your skin to a thick hide. You turn to rubber, but you still can't erase the mistake you keep making with her. You can barely feel a thing with her, but when you do, it's deep and stirring. It skips straight past skin to stroke bone. It gets into your very marrow, to be spat out as blood.

Her fingers are rough, from inebriation or intent, you can't tell. They tug at the button to your jeans, pop it open and drag down the zip. Your calves connect with the edge of your bed, and you snap back into your room. Into your head, instead of hers. Jade lets out a soft curse as she tries to drag the denim down, her nails scraping your hips. It doesn't hurt. The pain isn't in your skin, and you're thankful for it. You can only stand so much pain, the last thing you need is to feel every scar she's given you. No part of you is pristine, from your head to your toe. From the scar on your ear where she bit you to bleeding, to the mark on your ankle when you fell from chasing her, cold asphalt of the street chilling the soles of your bare feet. She ran from you, to take you somewhere new. The swimming of your head, the shaking of your vision made her almost impossible to follow. You'd tripped on the curb, the world a blur and your ankle on fire. Your only thought was that you'd lost her. When you'd risen to your feet with a soft grunt, she was nowhere to be seen. But that laugh of hers. That constant quivering laughter that sounded like birdsong. But if she's a bird, she's a mockingbird. It had left a trail for you to follow, and you'd fell on her among the pinechips in a playground, lips kissing away the cold, while your blood stained the ground.

Your jeans pool around your ankles, Jade's fingers skimming the scar as you step out of the pants. She's unsteady, even on her knees. Her forehead presses against your thigh, breath hot against your kneecap. Her fingers trace their way up your calf, like you're a ladder she's preparing to climb. Something to keep her from collapsing on the floor. You're just something to keep her steady. She's the opposite for you. Always putting you off-balance. Making you feel like odds and ends. Like all your parts are the wrong ones, put together haphazardly. Her lips brush your inner thigh, a low chuckle sounding.

"On the bed."

It's an order. There's the tiniest hint of a slur, the tiniest loss of control in her tongue. It's an excuse for her. That she's doing this because she's drunk. It's an escape route. She just couldn't control herself. She could just push you back, not even bother with the low words, but she'd probably go toppling too. And where's the satisfaction in that? Her sentences to you always consist of three words, but never the three you want to hear. Never the three you need. Even if she did say them, you wouldn't believe her. Even in your daydreams, in your wildest nightmares, the words never grace her lips. Her mouth is taped shut in your dreams. A big black 'X'. She speaks lies. She's never going to love you, so what's the use?

She loves to pretend, though. That's maybe the only thing she loves. Her acting ability. You wonder how much of her inebriation is real, and how much is just an act. Just a pantomime. Do you really make her fingers shake? Or is it just the alcohol, just her pretending that you do? Her pretence of love is the sharpest blade of all. It cuts deeper than anything else she does. If she hadn't tried so hard, you might've believed her. That- that she did care. But she's made of excuses and lies and vodka, and it tastes like anything but the truth. She's overacting. Of course she cares, of course she does. Of course she likes you, would she be here if she didn't? They're words she only ever says while your clothes are still on. They're scissors to snip them off faster, sheathed once you're naked.

When she's on top of you, she doesn't say a thing. Her eyes drift down your body, glassy and shining. You wonder if she's really seeing you. If she's seeing your shuddering heart and your trembling muscles. Maybe all she sees is flesh, a canvas for her to mark with her mistakes.

Her hand slips between your legs, and your numbness extends to even here. If she was gentle, you might not even feel a thing. Lucky for you, she's never been gentle. She thrusts into you with two fingers, a grunt forced from her, and you remember that the first time she'd done it, there'd been blood, and pain. It was the only time she'd ever apologised. The only time she'd been sober with you, regret written on her face. You wonder if she ever thinks about that. About how she's your first and only. Maybe that's why she hasn't left yet, maybe that's why she keeps pretending there's something between you. Out of guilt, out of responsibility. Because she knows you'll never be the one to leave her, when that's all she really wants you to do.

That pleasure builds inside you, you bite down on your lip to stop it bursting out. The longer it takes, the more control she loses. The more you push down that pleasure, the more she has to work for it. The more you can pretend she's not pretending. Her fingers make you moan, but there's no satisfaction in it. There's something missing, and the alcohol is the easiest thing to blame. For both of you. Blame it on a loss of sensation, a loss of control. You see why alcohol has always been a factor in your encounters. It's the easiest excuse to give for why this feels so wrong.

You hold it back as long as you can, but it's a hard thing to fight when she's trying so earnestly, fingers twisting inside of you, mouth wet on your neck. It snaps your body in two, makes it buck against her in some instinctive attempt to push her away, to pull her in closer. That's the problem you've always faced. You're still not sure which one you want to do. There's comfort in closeness, but Jade's covered in spines. It hurts just to hold her, but you're so cold alone.

Your hands are hard on her shoulder, her fingers slipping away from you, slick on your thigh. You flip her, breathless, onto her back, your thigh pushing between her legs, the last pangs of your climax still fading from you. Her lips are parted, a few strands of dark hair stuck to them, her eyes wide and startled, but not focussed. There's a burble of laughter in her lungs, nausea roiling in your stomach at the sound. It's like the rattle of tuberculosis, some disease eating away inside of her, speckling her breath with blood you can taste in a kiss. Her laughter isn't the sound of health, it's the sound of sickness, infecting the both of you.

You make her hide it in moans, your fingers starting what your mouth proceeds to finish, tongue flicking between Jade's shaking thighs. Even the taste of her is muddied by the alcohol stained on your tongue. You wish she'd use hers for something other than mixing the poison she drips in your ears. But she's too proud to say that she made a mistake. Too proud to admit that she wants something else, someone else, because what if she couldn't get it? What if she couldn't keep what she really wants? She's a coward, but so are you. You have what you want, as near to it as you can get. You want her, and you have her. You have her body, and you have her lips, and you have her choking laughter, her silky lies. You still want to pretend that you have it all. That you have her heart. You don't want to know the truth, you don't want to hear it. That you have nothing at all, that she's just ash in your hands, slipping through your fingers. You'll never have all of her. It's never going to end, not until someone tells the truth. Not until someone comes clean, scrubs away the filth you've let accumulate on the both of you.

You're nothing but lies.

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**A/N: This fic was inspired by a song. I have no experience in writing song fics, really, nor in reading them. Nonetheless, that song must be thanked for giving me the idea for this oneshot. Reviews are greatly appreciated, and if you can name the song, you'll get a surprise visit from me, or one of my licensed lookalikes.**

**So basically one day a potato will show up outside your door.**


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